Bloomberg News reports that Blue Origin LLC had to abort the suborbital New Shepard rocket immediately after it took off in West Texas. This is the first major failure of Jeff Bezos’ firm ever since it transitioned to routine commercial flights.
However, there was no one on board for the flight on Monday, and it just had a host of payloads. However, an identical version of this vehicle is used for regularly taking customers who pay for being taken to the edge of the space and return. The US Federal Aviation Administration revealed that it would be probing the incident.
The exact reason for the failure was not divulged; a minute following takeoff, the New Shepard rocket suffered an engine hiccup and veered off its normal track, which caused the automatic emergency system to kick in.
Such an incident was not planned, and no details have been gathered yet, revealing Erika Wagner, the senior director of the emerging space markets, during the ongoing live stream of the launch of Blue Origin. Erika also stated despite the snag; their crew successfully escaped it.
Blue Origin New Shepard
A representative of Blue Origin has asked people to stay hooked to Twitter for more updates. This was the ninth flight planning of the New Shepard booster, a reusable vehicle, and the booster is such that it can land upright once it successfully launches in space. The New Shepard rocket has, until now, had a reliable track record in most of its testing campaigns.
This was the company’s first payload New Shepard flight after August 2021. It may be recalled that Blue Origin embarked upon flights that flew passengers to space on New Shepard when the company founder launched Bezos.
In September 2021, a group of employees from Blue Origin penned a collective essay that accused the company of a toxic workplace environment and raised safety issues. The FAA in December cleared Blue Origin after a review was conducted about the company’s safety culture.
The FAA reported no injuries or damage to public property, stating that the booster’s landing was within the demarcated hazard zone.
